Cleaning apparatus of the kind in question is already known and is embodied in apparatus currently manufactured by Rotabrush International Limited, a United Kingdom company of Chesham, Buckinghamshire under the trade mark ROTABRUSH. Such apparatus has had considerable commercial success in the United Kingdom and elsewhere for several years.
These successful ROTABRUSH apparatus are ground-standing units. They comprise a wheeled trolley on which are mounted a motor drive and a fluid pump. In use, the pump draws fluid from a fluid canister - which may also be carried on the trolley - and supplies it to the brush head. The motor, preferably a mains-supply-powered electric motor, transmits rotary movement to the brush head via an elongate drive line. And the fluid supply line and the drive line are both sufficiently flexible to allow a user of the apparatus to move the brush about the surface to be cleaned.
Such apparatus works well, but there are circumstances where the essentially ground-standing nature of the apparatus presents drawbacks. For example, a user might want to work high off the ground, from a ladder or scaffold or powered access platform. The known ROTABRUSH apparatus could not be transported (or could be transported only with difficulty) to such locations.
Conversely, any attempt to provide a drive line from the apparatus to such a remote location is either impractical or literally technically impossible. If, as in the case of a powered access platform, the brush-holding operator might move substantial distances over and above the normal arc of sweep of the brush relative to his body, from the ground-standing trolley, an appropriate flexible drive line from trolley-mounted motor to remote brush head might well be ruled out. The need to manhandle a fluid supply line over such a distance, and under such working conditions, might similarly negate the successful working of the apparatus. And the general inconvenience, even danger, of attempting to work with excessively long multiple lines under such conditions is enormously increased.